


The Art Of Healing

by xJordanKayX



Series: Same Faces Different Places [4]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-29
Updated: 2018-01-29
Packaged: 2019-03-11 02:24:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13514757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xJordanKayX/pseuds/xJordanKayX
Summary: Betty is paralyzed after an accident and her doctor, Jughead, helps her walk again





	The Art Of Healing

**Author's Note:**

> Please note, that I have absolutely NO medical knowledge and what I did was take an actual case of this I found online and copied the medical terms and procedures.   
> I am however intimately acquainted with the strain of not being able to walk and do shit on your own (though it has not been paralyses for me but rather a knee injury that left me permanently disabled on that leg) and how long and exhausting the recovery process and physical therapy is/can be for that. 
> 
> promt: Bughead doctor/patient meeting.  
> Jughead, a doctor is with a patient, Betty Cooper, who was paralyzed ihn a car accident, and Jughead helps her to walk again after some time.
> 
> World:  
> A Riverdale in the future, where the teenagers are adults and Jughead didn't grow up on the Southside with no money.

He arrives back in town a week after the accident but he doesn't hear about it until his first day at the hospital. He and Betty had gone to the same school and attended the same classes ever since he can remember, but that's essentially all he knows about the woman. She had her group of friends and he had been hanging out with the complete opposite of them. He doesn't think they had ever even spoken to each other. She hasn't really changed much, though and so he recognizes her immediately when he walks by her open door on his way to the doctor's lounge. 

She's sitting up in bed, her parents on either side of her, comforting the blonde. She's crying, motioning helplessly from her covered legs to the wheelchair in the corner and back, but she speaks too low for him to hear her actual words. He watches them for a moment longer, glad for the layout of the room, because he can see them perfectly, but they can't spot him lurking outside in the hallway. He wants desperately to know what has her so upset but he does not know her at all, and especially not good enough to just waltz into the room and ask her. 

So he leaves her to her parents care and makes his way to the lounge, getting ready for his first shift at Riverdale General Hospital. It had not been his first choice, to come back, but his father had recently retired as the only neurosurgeon the small town hospital employs and Jughead had been asked to fill the position. It's not that he doesn't believe in his own abilities as a surgeon, but there were far more experienced doctors lining up for that job. He had accepted only after a long talk with his father, who had been determined that a smaller hospital would be much better for patient care than the big one in New York Jughead had been working at for the last five years. 

It takes exactly fifteen minutes and a bored and gossipy nurse for him to find out exactly what had happened to Betty Cooper. He hadn't asked, but the woman had started talking to him the very moment he'd shown up at the nurses' station in his white coat. She's old enough to have been around even when he and Betty had been little children and she confirms as much when she starts telling him about the poor girl she'd snuck a shitload of ice cream to when she had her tonsils taken out ages ago. 

Apparently, the poor girl had been hit by a drunk driver five days ago and had severe damage to her spinal cord. She'd been unconscious and barely breathing and had been rushed into the emergency room and then onward into the OR immediately. The surgeons had been able to stop the internal bleeding caused by the pressure of the airbag and managed to control the swelling in her brain caused by the impact of the other car. They had just barely saved her life, but unfortunately neither of them had been trained to repair her spine. The specialist they had come in two days later had taken a good look at her x-rays and had confirmed what she'd already been afraid of. There was nothing he could do, leaving her paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of her life. 

It's not like he doesn't trust other doctor's opinions and diagnosis, but this is his specialty and, more importantly, his hospital now, which makes the woman his patient and he'd be damned if he would just give up on her without taking a look for himself. 

 

It takes him another two days before he's caught up with his other patients before he can finally take another look at her x-rays. He doesn't like what he sees, but he's not prepared to give up yet either, so he, after a short introduction as her new surgeon, orders another set of x-rays and a CT scan and contacts and old colleague in New York with the results. And then it's another day later when the colleague finally gets back in touch with him and he's in luck. There * is * something they can do. He doesn't waste time telling her.

“But they told me I would never walk again, because I lost so much spinal fluid and my spine is just too damaged” She wants to believe him. There's nothing she wants more right now than being able to walk again, no matter how hard it will be or how long it will take. But she's already been told there's no use in operating and she doesn't know this doctor any better than the one they had brought in to give her the bad news, so why should she trust him with this? The white coat and the medical degree are not an answer, because the other one had that, too and * he * thought she's going to be paralyzed for life. 

“This is going to be a very delicate and complex surgery, but if we do this, I * can * repair the damage to your spine, take the pressure off” He's determined to make her see the potential here. If she doesn't want it, then he won't talk her into it, but nobody should be able to say he didn't do anything in his power to help her. “It will be a long recovery process but with the right post-operation care and extensive physical therapy you could be walking on your own again.” 

She's intrigued enough to let him tell her all about the surgery, what it will entail and * how * risky exactly it will be and then he gives her time to think about it. When her parents visit her that same afternoon, she relays everything he'd told her to them, asking their opinions and listening to their concerns. In the end she rings for the nurse in the evening, asking for him and when he enters her room, she agrees to the surgery. The genuine happiness in her eyes makes him do something he's sworn to never ever do; he promises her she will walk again. 

He sets the surgery for the following week, giving her head injury the proper time to heal more fully before putting her under a long sedation again and to arrange for two of his former colleagues and friends to come and assist him. This operation is risky enough on it's own, so he needs at least another specialist in the field of neurosurgery in the OR with him because should anything happen, he needs a second pair of trained eyes to help him find what's wrong. 

 

To their collective relieve the surgery went off without a hitch and the surgical team is able to realign the spine to release the pressure on the spinal cord the accident had created and free the dysfunction to the nervous system. Now it is up to her to find the strength and will to walk again. 

For the next several weeks, he visits her every day, starting off with questions about her well-being and checking for any progress or problems and staying for as long as he can, simply talking to her. It's during the third week, when he addresses her as Ms. Cooper, again, that she finally tells him to call her Betty, since he doesn't seem to be willing to do is on his own. They might not have interacted at all during their time in school, but she still remembers him and it's clear he remembers her, too and so she feels incredibly uncomfortable when he calls her Ms. When he agrees and asks her to call him Jughead, she laughs. It's what he went by as a teenager, because he didn't like his given name and somehow she thinks it fits that he never gave it up. It * does * suit him a lot better than Forsythe Pendleton Jones III. 

They strike up a close friendship while she's under his care and while she might not ever have seen him as a potential friend during their school days, she finds he's funny and nice and someone she can actually trust a great deal. 

It's about eight weeks after her surgery, that she wakes up to a strange sensation in lower leg and finds that the medical folder they had kept on her beside tray has fallen down during the night and is pressing one of its corners into her flesh. She sits up and reaches down to pick it up and that's when it finally registers in her brain. She can feel it. 

She pushes the button to call for the nurse and she cries when the nurse comes back with Jughead trailing right behind her. He's alarmed for just a moment, and then he sees her smile and he's at her side in an instant. He smiles at her, too, prodding and probing and examining her legs until he's satisfied that she's not imagining it, but actually * feels * every and all of his touches. That's the day they change her physical therapy plan to getting her out off bed on her own feet. 

A week later he sees her walk by the nurses station on her crutches, her parents close at both her sides to catch her if necessary. She's never looked more happy than in this moment. 

 

Three months after her surgery, she's allowed to go home. Her progress is astounding and with another few months of physical therapy to rebuild her strength and endurance she is expected to make a full recovery and get rid off the crutches and the wheelchair she still uses for extra exhausting tasks for good. 

She's still coming in for therapy every other day and she has no idea how he manages it, but he's there for every one of her appointments, waiting for her outside the office. He goes in with her, talks to her, encourages her and distracts her when she's too tired with all this and wants to just give it all up. But he won't let her, and eight months after he accident she makes her very first trip to therapy without any help at all. 

And when, another months later, her physical therapy sessions are over and she has no excuse anymore to see him every day, he asks her out on a date. She accepts with a teasing smile, after all she owes him for keeping his promise, but when she kisses him at the end of the night it has nothing to do with her owing him anything at all.


End file.
